Mignonne with Maquette, 2014
112 x 93.8 cm
Photorag




Nico Krijno / Construction

Some Lessons in Making Still Life Pictures


1823.

In this year Nicéphore Niépce carefully constructs a simple table setting with a knife, a spoon, a glass, a cup, a bowl, a bottle, a vase with three roses and a coffee pot and produces the first photographic still life.

How does an artist expand one of the great traditional art forms, the still life, into new territory? How does a photographic artist, today, continue this original tradition especially in an image-saturated world driven by the delivery speed of internet culture and the instant consumption and proliferation of copy ready, cut-and-paste images through the technology network? How does he create a complex contemporary image out of an ordinary arrangement of things?

Nico Krijno is a formalist, a visual stylist, and an image-maker completely in control of the world he creates inside the frame of the photographic image. How he arrives at any image though, is a journey somewhat ambiguous and irregular, paired with an intuitive process which can be pretty ugly as he loses himself in cans of paint - slathered, slobbered and thrown at makeshift constructions of found objects- general rubbish and stuff other people deem throwaway and worthless. Each object though, is carefully considered and positioned, fully cognisant of its role in the final composition; its shape, colour, texture and relationship orchestrated with the rest of the actors in the image. What exactly these objects are is unclear; sculptures perhaps, material devices to set up the motif of the still life maybe? Signatures and markers of the incessant line of production of the artist’s process? Perhaps we are getting closer:

The photographic document is a way for Krijno to hold on to those markers, those temporary constructions that are demolished or repurposed for something different moments, or weeks, later to live on only in the photographic analog negative or digital image TIFF file. These photo’d painting performances in the studio, happen only once and then, click, poof! Gone.

The surfaces of the image construction is afterwards digitally manipulated; enhanced, saturated, reconstructed, reconfigured, duplicated, or even erased. The tools of the modern photographic trade pushed into servicing the artist’s singular vision.

Background vs foreground; wood veneer, steel grids or a painted board, draped, found or photoshopped. Nearly anything goes especially if it disrupts or distorts the peace in the bigger picture. Swopping background cut-outs into the foreground, making shadow shapes into solid form reversing depth perception or flattening three-dimensional objects into planes of colour. The printed paper works are framed, pinned, rolled or stacked into new constructions themselves, recalling the mechanics of the creative process gone before. Several images are printed onto heavy fabric and stretched over wooden makeshifts structures, or attached to the ceiling high above, plunging down, or simply draped onto a steel shipping container wall and kept in place by heavy duty magnets, themselves forming part of the composition.

Krijno developed this project under the auspices of the 133 Arts Residency, which facilitates art-making for emergent artists from the African continent with the city of Johannesburg as a contemporary backdrop. This particular project corresponds in-situ with the contemporary architecture of the 133 Arts Residency complex of buildings, and as such, adds another set of complexities to the artist’s creative process.

Roelof Petrus van Wyk










Sculpture Study with wood, 2014
112 x 137.9 cm
Photorag



Balance Act. Roof-piece with wood and paint
Dimensions Variable.


Conglomerate stack
190.3 x 111.9 cm
Photorag


Chinese box stack with paint,
190.3 x 111.9 cm
Photorag



Sculpture Study with wood (grid)
112 x 137.9 cm
Photorag


Sculpture Study with wood, ink and potters clay
190.3 x 111.9 cm
Photorag


Mignonne with Iris
190.3 x 111.9 cm
PHORORAG